Here's a picture of El Morso taking a picture of some science in the Nullarbor desert.

Planetary science, and meteoritics in particular, can seem like some of the purest of pure science. My old friend Richard used to describe his work as society's hobby. Trying to find out the origins of the solar system, because that's what you're investigating when you study meteorites, has no practical value, but, by God, people are interested in it.

It's not all fun and nonsense, though. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and working out the origins of the global methane budget could be a very useful tool. Methane from different sources - tundra outgassing, termite mounds, cow burp, and so on - has different chemical signatures. How do you work out those signatures? Well, you could employ the use of static mass spectrometry to determine the combined stable isotopic composition of small samples of atmospheric methane.

After he returned from that Nullarbor trip, a type of fungus previously unknown to science was found in El Morso's laundry.